(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — Preface, aph. 1)

In this book, the unexamined is examined — perhaps even the unaskable — a possibility that, for this age, appears far too vague: the existence of a “middle path” between religious and scientific convictions, that is, between the religious and the scientific view of the world.

Just as once, in ancient India, Gotama Buddha set out upon his “middle path” between Hinduism and Jainism, so too do we today take a step onto our own middle path — a kind of pantheistic religious philosophy, resembling a silent thaumaturgy — which we wish to insert between the overgrown footpaths of great and small religions on one side, and the one and only straight-lined “highway of science” on the other.

While the religious paths are still adorned with trees bearing diverse fruits of meaning, the scientific highway offers interesting and sophisticated stopping points — resting places in a technical sense. If such a “path” is possible at all, we believe it might rest on a form of faith grounded in intuition and feeling, but also in philosophical and scientific reasoning — a faith in the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence/Return (of the Same), entrusted to us by none other than the “freest of all free spirits” and “the prophet of our time” — Friedrich Nietzsche.

This possibility of a “middle path” is examined here more thoroughly than in any previous work, and though it has taken a side — faith in Eternal Recurrence — it does not shy away from exposing the many difficulties of such a teaching, as well as the objections it faces, sometimes rightly, sometimes not. For to many — which currently means the vast majority of people on this planet — this possibility still appears unimaginable, and therefore wholly unacceptable.

“Now, my dear and good friend! The August sun shines over our heads, the year is fugitive, it grows quieter and more peaceful on the mountains and in the woods. Thoughts have been looming on my horizon the like of which I have never seen — I don’t want to say a word about them, I want to preserve an unruffled calm in myself.
It seems I shall have to live several years longer. Oh, my friend sometimes the realization runs through my head that I am actually living a supremely dangerous life: for I belong among those machines that can explode! The intensities of my feeling make me shudder and laugh aloud — already on several occasions I was unable to leave my room for the ridiculous reason that my eyes were inflamed — from what? On each occasion I had been weeping excessively during my hikes the day before; no, not sentimental tears, but tears of exultation; during which I sang and muttered nonsense, filled to the brim with my new vision, which I am the first of all human beings to have.” (From Nietzsche’s letter to Heinrich Köselitz [Peter Gast], August 14, 1881, Sils-Maria)